BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Fish Fish Journal - BETTAS ONLY

Hey Cheerful,
Welcome to the forum! I saw your question about whether to do 100% water change at home when you go for Winter Break. Bettas are very sensitive to change, and just moving from one home to another may be traumatic for him. I would suggest that you keep him in the water when you get home, then gradually add in water from home to his tank, first siphoning out an equal amount from the tank. That way the different water won't be a shock to his system and he should adapt well when you return to college.

Nan

Hey Nan,

Thanks a lot for answering my question :-)

honestly folks, i've about given up on this whole fin-rot subject. EVERYONE gets it at some point or another, i'm just gonna take it like it's the flu or a cold. call me lazy or cruel or whatever.

i have (just like the rest of you) been batteling this off and on for months now. 'Tude had the worst bout of it a month ago when he lost half his tail. it's growing back now, but i didn't feel like going into the whole hospital routine again since i had just gotten over that when they had odinium (gold dust).

perhaps i should show a pic of 'Tude's tank with all his friends and filters? but the setup is quite nice. it has cycled nicely and green grows all around, plants and small amounts of algae. the patches of hair algae are held in check by the 3 cherry barbs which nibble at it constantly, so it is much like nice, green, manicured grass.

everyone seems fine, rigth now i'm giving them all a treatment for what i think is ick, but a VERY mild bout.

i realy try not to put too much in the water since the tank has cycled and plants and everything seems to growing nicely. i do the weekly %25 to %50 water change, (when i have time) i will do some moderate grooming of the tank overall, i.e. clean filter containers, brown algae, etc.

in short, 'Tude & Twinky still get fin-rot from mild to moderate bouts, but they usually come out of it on their own with some %75 water changes and no meds.

i think bettas are always going to have problems and unless it is a serious enough case i would leave well enough alone. jilly is right that just clean water should take care of it, along with feeding them up on live foods. it makes 'em strong.

i just recently bought a pretty lil' girl and within hours of bringing her home she got a serious case of mouth fungus. but after a few fresh water changes, she's almost as good as new (still growing back some lips).

Yeah Mel, I'm with ya...sick and tired of this finrot..I keep my tanks nice and clean and they still get it...so there must be another cause besides dirty water.

One thing I don't do is the fresh live food. I have been looking around for some live blackworms and a tray to keep them in. I found some online but they always want to sell more than I really need..and the site I wanted to purchase a worm tray from..my computer says has a security issue..so I don't feel very good about giving that site my card number.

I had tried microworms and found them a pain to deal with. I always ended up getting alot of the oatmeal gunk in the water along with the worms..now THAT's really great for water quality..lol

I stopped brineshrimp production since my fry have gotten big enough to eat the same stuff I feed the rest of the hord..I have read of folks having problems with swim bladder disfunction when feeding lots of brineshrimp, and I have found that problem too in my fry..but that could also have been caused by overfeeding, which next spawn I will cut back to 2 feedings a day instead of 3...hopefully that will solve that problem.

I did recently purchase some frozen bloodworms which my bunch seem to really enjoy. I'm not sure how often I should feed it to them though, so I only give it a couple times a week.

If anyone knows where I can get a reasonable amount of live blackworms along with a worm tray to go with it...I would love to know! Course, I'm not sure how the family will feel about having worms in the fridge all the time...lol...I suppose as long as they don't smell bad they'll get used to it.. <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

I used to keep live tubifex worms in my fridge. As long as you rinsed them daily, there was no odor at all.

Marian

EMG, you know you can get those worms at reptile places as well, they would probably have a better asortment of goodies for the boys. iff all else fails... you could always get mealy worms and cut them to bite size! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Thanks mel...I'll have to check out some stores I don't normally go to to find those black worms. I had thought of the meal worms, but having to cut up all that worm to feed almost a hundred betta..didn't appeal to me much....lol :rolling:

Get this - I made peas for dinner last night and chopped/mushed one up into little bits for Fang to try out. I thought he'd turn his nose up at the pea big time - no way! He loved it! I fed him a little bit at a time, so he'd chase it down to the bottom and devour it like nothing else! Then he'd rush back up to the top for more. It was weird - like playing fetch ('cept he didn't spit it back out at me....).

we don't usually cook vegetables at home, so i haven't tried this out yet. seeing as my humpback 'tude has been getting constipated every meal, even with very tiny amounts, i might just try this. does, the desired effect happen right away or what?

Hi Mel,

No - immediate "ex-lax" effects were not noted, but when I cleaned his bowl out the next day, there were more "chunkies" than usual - so I take that to mean it cleaned him out a bit.

- Jen